Wang Qishan has been appointed to China’s national legislature. He used his previous position on the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection to enforce allegiance to President Xi Jinping.

China’s officially atheist government insists it has authority to choose the next spiritual leader of the Tibetans. But the current Dalai Lama has said his new incarnation will not be found in territory controlled by China. Reincarnation is the Tibetans’ traditional method for identifying future religious leaders.

In a New Year’s Day speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said, “The US should know that the button for nuclear weapons is on my desk.” U.S. President Donald Trump responded in a tweet that his button is “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim’s.

Shenyang Pharmaceutical University in northeast China criticized young students for being ‘blindly excited’ about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
A Chinese university has banned its students from celebrating Christmas. Shenyang Pharmaceutical University in northeast China criticized young students for being ‘blindly excited’ about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In his first public appearance since Xi was elevated to a status comparable to Mao Zedong, he took the Politburo Standing Committee to the brick house in Shanghai’s French Concession where the party was started in 1921.

Hong Kong jails three young leaders for their roles in massive 2014 pro-democracy rallies, known as the ‘Umbrella Movement.’ Their sentences are a fresh blow to the campaign for political reform in the Chinese city.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, visiting Hong Kong to mark 20 years of rule by China, was met on arrival in the former British colony on June 29 with calls to release writer and democracy activist Liu Xiaobo. Liu, 61, is being treated at a hospital in northeastern China, following a diagnosis of late-stage liver cancer. Liu was already in jail when he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" in a decision that infuriated Beijing, which put his wife under strict house arrest.